Are Monuments Required?

[pls7809]

Please review the following regarding the setting of monuments in relation to filing a Record of Survey...

§8762(b)(5) - The points or lines set during the performance of a field survey of any parcel described in any deed or other instrument of title recorded in the county recorders office are not shown on any subdivision map, official map, or record of survey.

§8762(c) - The record of survey required to be filed pursuant to this section shall be filed within 90 days after the setting of boundary monuments during the performance of a field survey or within 90 days after completion of a field survey, whichever occurs first.

§8764(a) - The record of survey shall show the applicable provisions of the following consistent with the purpose of the survey: All monuments found, set, reset, replaced, or removed, describing their kind, size, and location, and giving other data relating thereto.

§ 8771(a) - Monuments set shall be sufficient in number and durability and efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed, to assure, together with monuments already existing, the perpetuation or facile reestablishment of any point or line of the survey.

§8771(b) - When monuments exist that control the location of subdivisions, tracts, boundaries&etc.

1. Are monuments required to be set at boundary corners during a boundary survey? Does the law in CA require this?

2. Are there any other codes missing that should be added to that list that impact the answer?

Background:
I have a friend that did an ALTA Survey which established lines from a deed that are not shown on a record of survey, subdivision map or official map, so he is also filing an RS. The boundary goes through a few angle points between two streets. The streets have plenty of monuments and the deed begins and ends at the streets with a POB tied to a monumented position. The client does not want monuments set at the corners (Item 1 of Table A is not checked). CS is telling my friend to set the monuments and said they would report to local PPC if they won't.

[btaylor]

I do not think monuments are ever required to be set. You can, and I have (when the costs were less expensive) done ROS maps when I have not set property corner monuments.

I cannot imagine a CS dictating that I *have* to set monuments, so I am interested in other responses.

[land butcher]

From what I have been reading on here lately it appears that CS's and govt agencies in general are making up rules and requirements without researching existing State laws that would override such requirements.
Without a State agency to "advise" them that it cannot be required they will continue to "do as they please".
With our career politicians and lack of responsibility on the part of govt employees what do they care what one or two citizens, or LS's, think.
If our State Board is not going to police other govt agencies, then what is the State boards purpose besides harassing the private surveyor.

[LS 4722]

1. Are monuments required to be set at boundary corners during a boundary survey? Does the law in CA require this?

No

§ 8771(a) - Monuments set shall be sufficient in number and durability and efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed, to assure, together with monuments already existing, the perpetuation or facile reestablishment of any point or line of the survey.

The way I read 8771(a) is that the qualifying words of this section are "..of the survey." If one was doing a 4 corner survey, then 4 monuments are required. A one line survey, two monuments needed. I believe this section relies on what the client and you have contracted for.

The client does not want monuments set at the corners (Item 1 of Table A is not checked). CS is telling my friend to set the monuments and said they would report to local PPC if they won't.

Neither the client or the CS staff dictates the setting of monuments. It's the surveyors call. IMHO, he should have set them regardless of what box was checked or not checked.

[D Ryan]

Section 8766 of the PLS Act delineates the items the County Surveyor is required to check as part of reviewing a Record of Survey. Section 8771 is not one of those items. Therefor sufficient monumentation and conformance with 8771 is the responsibility of the individual surveyor. To me, this translates that the County Surveyor can't make that part of the review process. Having said that, the larger issue at hand is whether this case is a violation of 8771. The operative word here is facile; "done or achieved with little effort or difficulty". Can the points or lines of the survey be retraced easily? As a County Surveyor, I have no problem with suggesting more monuments may be needed, or just posing the question whether the surveyor has considered if the number of monuments set conforms with 8771. And it might be good material for a PPC. In fact, this is a suggestion any surveyor should be able to make to a fellow professional.

So my answer to your first question is yes, the law requires that monuments be set if there aren't already monuments in place that allow easy retracement of the survey.

Dave Ryan,
Humboldt County

[dedkad]

I don't believe State Law requires the setting of monuments, but if it was a development project, then the County's Code or project conditions could require setting of monuments at property corners. However, if that was the case and your friend refused to set monuments, I would think that the proper enforcement arm would be the County's Code enforcement, not the PPC.

[Berk Blake, PLS CA]

One wonders how the CS got to see a ALTA survey in the first place.

Yes, you can perform a boundary survey without setting monuments. If you ignore the check mark in Table A, you won't have to worry about doing the work. The surveyor that read the check mark will be doing it.

[pls7809]

Hi Berk,

They filed an RS because the boundary shown on the ALTA was of a metes and bounds deed not shown on an RS, Sub map or Official Map. The County did not see the ALTA, just the RS that was resultant from the ALTA.

Thanks,

[pls7809]

Dedkad,

I agree with you. A development project is governed by the codes of the approval agency and the SMA. The agency codes will determine monumentation requirements.

[land butcher]

I am not familiar with currant LA County final map requirements but not that many years ago individual lot corners were not required to be set, only sufficient monumentation to reestablish the lots, many times these were only the monuments found to do the boundary and no new mons set for the subdivision.
If this is no longer the case let me know.

[JeffroH]

Cut out the "fluff" and this is what I read:

§ 8771(a) - "Monuments set shall be sufficient in number... to assure... the perpetuation... of any point or line of the survey."

I'd say "Yes".

My two cents, anyway.
Jeff

[Peter Ehlert]

"CS is telling my friend to set the monuments and said they would report to local PPC if they won't."
I would think your CS should chat with the PPC... maybe they would explain that he is out of line

[pls7809]

8771(a) presumes you are setting monuments. Wouldn't the language of 8771(a) be: "Monuments shall be set sufficient in number...to assure...the perpetuation...of any point or line of the survey" if the intention of the law was to set monuments for every boundary survey?

Why does 8762(c) start the 90 day clock at the setting of boundary monuments OR at the completion of a field survey? You can do a field survey to collect evidence and compute a deed line using that evidence, locate fences or walls, etc. and then be done with the field work.

[Scott Tikalsky]

Whose dime is the ROS being performed under… your friend’s client or your friend? If it’s the client, he is already paying for a ROS. Why not mark the corners of his and his adjoining neighbors property to affirm where the lines are. If it’s your friend, then why not, professionally, finish the survey. Legally, I think he is OK filing what he has. The section of the LS Act (8771(a)) as you have said reads “Monuments set shall…â€￾ not “Monuments shall be set…â€￾. Professionally though, he has not completed the survey. I vote no, but with a big caveat to it.

[pls7809]

The client is paying for the ALTA and RS. They are paying for the RS only because it is a M&B description that has never been shown on a map. The client is likely an attorney or lender and they don't care about the monuments and won't pay for an extra two crew days to set them. Should it be on the surveyor's dime to set the monuments? I don't think so.

[btaylor]

I agree Ryan. I am never on board with the mentality that it is not a "Survey" unless monuments are set. It depends on the desires of the client. It is an ALTA, and as often is the case, setting monuments are irrelevant to the clients goal - especially if the fences are all fine and good and in fact, nothing is being constructed at all, as I suspect is happening in this case.

Let's take it step further. What I see occur more often are surveys of commercial blocks or portions of blocks, and eventually everything gets knocked down with new buildings and sidewalks, and you see no ROS later. Or you see an ROS and they show tags set on a sidewalks around the area of work..that were all immediately destroyed.

Let's not look at things too bureaucratically and look at the bigger picture of what affects what.

[E_Page]

I agree with the Ryans (Dave R, R Veersteg, and ryan Taylor).

The binary poll question at the top of the thread oversimplifies. I voted "yes" but need to qualify it.

As has been pointed out, nowhere in the PLSA does it definitively state that "Monuments shall be set". If it did, the law would also need to specify just what the monuments shall mark, and if it is not possible to mark the points or lines as required directly, what manner of witness or reference point (position relative to required point or line, not mon material) is acceptable in the alternate.

But the law does not do that. As Ric often points out, the CA PLSA is written such that it leaves considerable room for the exercise of professional judgment.

8771 (a), like so many other code sections is written in a style that eliminates superfluous parts of sentences, such as an article or a pronoun here and there, that does not change the meaning, saves a little bit of space on the page, but also may not be as clear to some as it would be if the eliminated articles and pronouns were included.

"[The] Monuments [that are] set [by the surveyor] shall be sufficient in number and durability and efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed, to assure, together with monuments already existing, the perpetuation or facile reestablishment of any point or line of the survey."

The code section also explicitly states that when considering whether the points and lines of the survey can be readily reestablished from the monumentation, that the already existing monumentation is to be considered together with any monuments that are set by the surveyor.

If the surveyor sets no monuments, but considers that fact together with monuments already existing, and determines that the locations of any point or line of the survey are either perpetuated directly or allow for the "facile" reestablishment of those points and lines, then there is no need to set additional monumentation.

Facile = easily accomplished or attained (Merriam-Webster). It also means simplistic, shallow, trite, inane... so I question whether it was the best word to use for this purpose... but I digress.


So a follow up question may be "What is meant by 'perpetuation' of a point or line of the survey?"

Does a corner need to be monumented directly for its location to be perpetuated, or would reference monuments also perpetuate the corner?

If reference monuments perpetuate the corner, do they need to be on one or more of the lines of the survey leading to that corner or can they be at some random direction?

What if it is not possible to monument the corner nor to set reference monuments on the lines leading to the corner? Would monuments set as swing ties perpetuate the corner? Would offset monuments perpetuate the line?

If the corner cannot be monumented and some manner of reference monuments are set, how close do they need to be to be considered as perpetuating the corner position? Do they need to be within the reach of a pocket tape? A 100' chain? A 300' Chain? Can they be 100', 200' or more from the corner and still perpetuate the corner?

If we're OK with reference monuments for perpetuating the corner, we still recognize that at some point (as in a point of consideration of the facts of the survey, not as in a point of location), as distance from the corner increases, as obstacles occur between the monument location and the corner location, we recognize that the monuments do not directly perpetuate the corner well, but if placed in positions that ensure that the corner position can be reliably and consistently reproduced with a minimal amount of measurement, then aren't those monuments sufficient in number and efficiently placed so as to assure the facile reestablishment of the points and lines of the survey? Doesn't that meet the requirements of §8771(a)?

What if those monuments are existing monuments of previous surveys? Do any additional monuments need to be set to fulfill the requirements of §8771(a)?


Not in my opinion. In many instances, it is a better service to one's client and to the public to set monuments at the corners if it is possible to do so. But in other instances, such as Bryan described, setting those monuments is nothing more than a useless academic exercise, being a totally unnecessary expense to the client (or to you) and serving no benefit to the public. One must apply professional judgment rather than shallow (facile) bureaucratic rigidity.

[pls7809]

Nice analysis Evan. Not too many words IMO ;)

[Berk Blake, PLS CA]

Sorry Ryan, missed the rs being filed, and would set the corners at the angle points. Makes it a real survey instead of a "compiled by record" survey.

[land butcher]

If the surveyor sets no monuments, but considers that fact together with monuments already existing, and determines that the locations of any point or line of the survey are either perpetuated directly or allow for the "facile" reestablishment of those points and lines, then there is no need to set additional monumentation.

Facile = easily accomplished or attained (Merriam-Webster). It also means simplistic, shallow, trite, inane... so I question whether it was the best word to use for this purpose... but I digress.


If the client does not want mons set and you found enough existing mons to establish the PLs then that is sufficient for another surveyor to reestablish the PLs.
If we do set mons it makes it easier on the next surveyor and creates "ties" for the old controlling mons.

[D Ryan]

Evan-

I just need to know what coffee you're drinking....wow.

Actually, quite an expansive and accurate discussion on the topic.

Dave Ryan

------------------------------------------------------------
defund reality...

[E_Page]

Sorry Ryan, missed the rs being filed, and would set the corners at the angle points. Makes it a real survey instead of a "compiled by record" survey.

Berk,

Whether or not you set monuments is not what makes something a real survey or a "compiled from record" survey. A real survey is one in which you make your own measurements, gather doccumentary and fieled evidence, evaluate it and arrive at conclusions based upon it.

A compiled map is not a survey but a mostly mathematical exercise in which you correllate various maps to the best that the mapped info allows and do not go to the field to gather evidence or make measurements.

With a real survey, you can set additional monuments or not. With a compiled boundary/map, you had better not set any monuments.

[7702]

"If we do set mons it makes it easier on the next surveyor..... "

Unless we find the mons out of position by a couple hundreths and stay up all night trying to figure out what to do about it. : )

[land butcher]

LOL. But according to a CalTrans office guy I talked to once, anywhere on the gear spk and/or washer is close enough.

[Berk Blake, PLS CA]

Berk,

Whether or not you set monuments is not what makes something a real survey or a "compiled from record" survey. A real survey is one in which you make your own measurements, gather doccumentary and fieled evidence, evaluate it and arrive at conclusions based upon it.

A compiled map is not a survey but a mostly mathematical exercise in which you correllate various maps to the best that the mapped info allows and do not go to the field to gather evidence or make measurements.

With a real survey, you can set additional monuments or not. With a compiled boundary/map, you had better not set any monuments.

If you want to teach, I know of a few colleges that would love to have such a learned instructor